


start it over

by insunshine



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-26
Updated: 2006-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insunshine/pseuds/insunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac thinks about Cassidy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	start it over

It sort of lives in her closet.

 

She’s wanted to throw it away- **correction** : she _has_ thrown it away, at least million times (in her mind at least, but it’s not like she’s counted or anything).

 

She’s actually followed through on the throwing it away part a couple of times (to her immense surprise). Just thrown it in the trash like she just didn’t care (even though it’s kind of pointless to pretend that she doesn’t).

 

She’s broken the jewel case (smashed it into _six little pieces_ , but she kept it anyway, because that’s just how she _is_ ), and even through the multiple beatings it has sustained (and it has _substantial_ scratches on its surface) still, when it comes time to take her trash out in the morning, she always digs it out, and brushes it off, and let herself cry for exactly three seconds, and then shoves it as far and deep into her closet as it will go.

 

She’s very bad at letting go, and even though there’s a new closet now, and she’s had a few since that first one, it still goes in the exact same spot. 

 

There have been _three_ different closets, actually, three different spaces and shapes and sizes, but its place is always the same, shoved behind yearbook from senior year (her barely opened yearbook from senior year that she feels like she’s going to throw up whenever she looks at), and the camera her parents bought her for graduation, that still in its box (because she can’t bear to actually use it).

 

She opens her eyes, because the light peeking in through her curtains is hazy, and not morning light at all, and her eyes catch on the partially open closet, because it’s right in front of her face (the apartment is new, and her bed has moved in relation to the closet-which, come to think of it, doesn’t exactly have the best door closing abilities), and if she cranes her head just so, she can see the left sleeve of the orange jumper her great aunt Millie gave her last Christmas, which now shields the yearbook, which is on top of the camera, which…

 

She could play this game all day, and she can’t afford to do that. She has résumés to get out. She has interviews to plan, and companies to research, and things.

 

She has things to do. She is a college senior. She has plans. She has a _life_.

 

So even though she’s halfway up and could move towards being productive instead of apathetic, and burrows back into the covers and closes her eyes, and tries not to think of the fact that June 6th is in two weeks (there should be a panic setting in for different reasons, she has an interview with InfoTech Designs (only the biggest software developing firm on the West Coast) that day (their decision, not hers), but about that, she is strangely calm, almost apathetic in a way, even though it’s what she’s been working for for the past four years).

 

 _It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t_ matter _._ The words have become a mantra of sorts, and she can feel her breath becoming shallower and shallower, because even though she doesn’t want to, and even though she’s over it, she _is_ , (she’s got to be. It would kill her if she wasn’t) and even though she is older and wiser, and even when she replays the everything in her head over and over, and she can see the signs (huge, big warning ones), _even though_ ; she can’t stop the memories from flooding back in, and if she could cry about it any more, this is the point in the story where the tears would come. Sometimes she thinks she can’t cry anymore because if she does, she won’t be able to stop.

 

 _I loved you, you know;_ her entire body freezes, and she knows he’s just a figment of her imagination (he’s got to be), and even though she knows that he’s not real; she still can only barely breathe.

 

 _Yeah, well, I didn’t love you. 17 is too young to love anybody._ Her voice is stronger than she’d expected (she isn’t sure if her lips are really moving or not, or if the words just sound loud in the mix of her own consciousness), and her eyes are still closed, because even though he’s can’t be real, and she’s very likely talking to herself, and this is just so _stupid_ , she’s kind of proud that her voice doesn’t come out in a breathy Marilyn Monroe whisper.

 

Not, that when she _does_ channel Marilyn, she does that great of a job of it anyway.

 

 _If you didn’t love me, you wouldn’t have kept it._ He responds, and his voice is strong too, and he settles on the edge of her bed, and it actually _creaks_ , and her eyes have to pop open, because her bed wouldn’t creak if he weren’t real.

 

 _You’re delusional. And dead. And_ psychotic. _And I am so done with being an enabler. Okay? I don’t care about you. We weren’t serious, and you were crazy. It’s not my fault, and you know what? I am a packrat. I don’t throw away anything. That’s why I kept it. Okay?_

 

Now, her voice is shaking. She’s pleading with him, and she’s looking really hard to see if she can look through him, but she can’t, because he looks real, and solid, and he doesn’t look like any kind of ghost she would have ever envisioned (he also looks the exact same age that he’d died at, and that alone almost makes her believe that he’s real, because if she were to really fantasize about him (which she rarely ever does, because it hurts too much), she would try and picture him older, aging as she did, not stuck, as he is, permanently at 16).

 

 _I’m sorry._ He says, and her heart twists, because his eyes are as sad as they’d ever been, and they’re searching hers and hopeful, and she seriously can’t handle it, because he _looks exactly the same,_ and he looks like he means it, but he’d pretended to mean a lot of things.

 

 _You know;_ she mutters conversationally, sitting up and blinking a few times, because the therapist she was _required by state law to see_ (before she got so fed up with him and just…stopped going) had told her during their first session that the only way to deal with her problems was to face them head on.

 

She’s always had that little issue with confrontation.

 

_You know if you had told me, I could have tried to help. We could have…_

 

There’s no answer though. And all those times that she’d wished she’d been able to talk to him, all those times she’d wanted to tell him just how much he’d hurt her…this had always been the snag. It had happened before they’d met. She couldn’t have helped even if she’d wanted to.

 

 _Did you even listen to it?_ He asks, changing track completely, and for a second she doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. He actually has to point back towards the closet (she doesn’t detect even a _hint_ of transparency) before she finally, stupidly gets it, and she almost smiles (almost).

 

 _Shouldn’t you know that? You’re_ dead, _Cass. Shouldn’t you have all the answers to life’s questions?_ He smiles sadly at her, and she wonders again, why, when he was alive, she didn’t realize just how sad his smile really was. It makes the little bit that’s actually left of her heart to break again for all the torture he’d had to live through.

 

 _Did you listen to it?_ He asks again, and his voice is quiet, almost as if she’s hearing from far away, and her eyes are drifting closed even though she doesn’t want them to, and god, she just wishes she was _over_ this.

 

_Of course I did, Cassidy, over and over until it was scratched and started skipping, and-_

 

Her breath is coming out in shallow bursts, and her eyes snap open, and of course he’s gone, and the tears that she thought she’d never shed again are falling down her cheeks in flashflood patterns, because who was she kidding when she thought she was over him (and man does this explain every failed relationship attempt she’s had since then. It makes her kind of sick)?

 

She takes a calming breath trying to rationalize it out, and makes things Okay, and do the breathing exercises the way Logan’s yoga instructor had taught her to, back in the day.

 

Before she can stop herself, she’s tugging the closet open, and pushing away the knickknacks and pulling out the plastic baggie that _it’s_ in. She can still make his handwriting, even though the color of the sharpie has faded over the years more than likely due to the constant, repeated beatings.

 

She turns it over in her hands, trying not to remember the day that he gave it to her. The one right before graduation; right after he’d asked her to spend the night with him at the Neptune Grand, how perfect and wonderful and _easy_ it had all seemed.

 

 _I hope you like it;_ he’d muttered, looking down, and she couldn’t stop looking at him, because no one had ever made her a mix _CD_ before.

 

 _God, Cass, I love it!_ She’d breathed, with more enthusiasm than she’d had when her parents had given her the new camera that morning. She’d turned it over in her hands, and she couldn’t stop smiling, because he had done this for _her_.

 

 _You haven’t even heard it yet;_ he’d whispered, and his voice had been flustered, and his cheeks were burning a little (she was close enough that she could tell), and even though she’d never been the romantic type in the past, she snuggled closer to him on the same red couch they’d first sat on together, and leaned her head on his shoulder.

 

 _Doesn’t matter, Dorkwad;_ she’d said, because she couldn’t lose all of her cool or whatever (going around and calling him _schnookums_ or _baby_ was definitely far, far away from the top of her priority list). _You made it for me, so I know it’ll be perfect. And tomorrow night will be too. I know it will._ Her cheeks had flushed too, and she’d dropped her eyes a little, because she wasn’t exactly a _pro_ at these kinds of things, but he’d let his arm drape around her shoulders, and he’d promised her that it would be. He’d promised her, and his voice had cracked a little as the words he’d whispered floated to her ears, and she’d believed him.

 

What a fucking dope.

 

 _I’m sorry._ He says, and she doesn’t even bother looking up this time, because there’s no way in hell that he’s actually there.

 

 _You_ lied to _me;_ she mutters, and she’s surprised that out of the thousands of things she’s spent years wanting to tell him, this is the very last one she expected to ever come out of her mouth.

 

 _I would have taken you with me if I could;_ he whispers, and her eyes pop open because never, in her wildest fantasies had she ever even thought he cared. _You were the best part of my life, Mac. I-_

 

She pushes past him (he disappears this time, and her gut clenches a little) the CD into her stereo (the barely used one Parker got her for her 21st birthday), and (her breath hitches when it doesn’t start up right away, like always) when the bass line picks up, and the beat takes her away, she tries not to picture his face.


End file.
